I don't own One Piece

I spent the next three days in my apartment. I wrote that I had a week paid vacation so I didn't have to worry about going to the coffee shop. Or about walking past that book store.

"That particular writer trapped herself in her domain, as long as you don't step foot in the book store she can't get you." Azrael tried to tell me.

"Doesn't mean my paranoid ass is taking any chances." I grumbled as I threw my pencil down. I'd been working on precautions and ways to exit for the past three days. The first thing I did was catch up on One Piece, and all I could say was, holy crap! The Sanji arc! The next thing I did was even more warding. I turned the necklace I always wore into an amulet of protection. And, then, I wrote, I wrote and worried. Worrying wasn't good for writing, but that didn't really stop me from doing so.

"You need to go back to work. You need to interact with people. If you don't you'll wind up just like her."

I waved away Azrael's concern. I had them, I didn't really need anyone else to keep sane and nothing like the girl in the bookstore. It was just the way my mind worked. I only needed one other person, and they didn't even need to be there in person, though it did help a little.

"Ash!" Azrael wailed. Dear gods, it sounded like a damn foghorn or something.

"Oh, my gods, Z!" I shouted slamming my hands over my ears. "Just give me some time! Please!" I continued, carefully pulling my hands from my ears, just in case Azrael was going to make that sound again, where had it even come from, like damn.

"Z?" Azrael questioned.

"I didn't have time to choke out Azrael, I like it and all, but like damn, it is not a good fit for arguing." I explained, plus I just really liked odd nicknames like Z.

"We weren't arguing." Azrael protested. I chose not to respond to that. Instead I turned back to my writing.

What the hell was I going to write? Man, this writer's block stuff sucked monkey butt. I chuckled when I thought of a line about writing from Supernatural. I mean, the fact they made God, you know the infallible one with the big G, a writer who acknowledged that writing was difficult, well to me that was funny.

I picked up my pencil and twirled it around. Perhaps I should work on world building and that way I wouldn't have to risk mischaracterizing any of the One Piece characters, I could just put them in places I thought fit their characters and let the dripping paint effect fill in the rest. Then I wouldn't have to worry about making anybody ooc, which was something I fretted about constantly.

I pulled out a clean sheet of paper and let my pencil hover over it. I was really glad I wasn't using a gel pen, those tended to leave gel all over your paper if you let it hover above it too long, trust me, I went through a whole gel pen phase and did this a lot so I would know.

What kind of world should I build? I knew it had to involve Wicked Wick Café, that was my starting point after all, but a café coffee shop thing was pretty universal. Hell, I could probably fit Wicked Wick Café in the actual One Piece world somehow. But I wouldn't do that. Not with this spell hanging over my head at least. Inserting the coffee shop into the One Piece world would mean risking change to canon and that was a big no-no for me, mostly because I was always worried I was changing the wrong things and that I would have to face a mob of readers who hated it, not that I had to worry about that too much, my stories were never that popular.

So, canon was out. That left me with AUs. That was good, I could work with AUs. AUs were how I got into fanfiction after all. And yeah, I was one of those fanfiction readers/writers whatever.

So, what kind of AU? Well I could do a high school one, but I didn't want to mess with people's ages. Perhaps a collage AU then. Hmm. That could work. I grinned and put the pencil down to paper. Let's start with Coby since I'd already run into him. Well, I knew he worked part time at the café so, I wrote quickly that he went to school in the morning and Wicked Wick Café in the afternoon during the week and worked morning during the weekend. His days off rotated. At school, he was in the ROTC program, which fit with his dream to become a marine. There, I smiled, that should cover Coby enough that the effect would take over the rest.

Now Ren, since apparently, she was here too. Let's see, she was on a gymnastics scholarship and shared a dorm with her twin sister Nami. I loved the doppelganger rules I'd come up with, especially in the later rewrites when I expanded on them, but they had no place in this AU, maybe a supernatural one if I chose to write it. Nami was studying meteorology and oceanology. I thought that fit Nami really well, but I could have been wrong. Damn my uncertainly sucked.

Ok, so, Coby, Ren, and Nami, got them covered. Who else? Sanji! Couldn't forget Sanji, obviously, he was in culinary school. And Robin! She was a history major, getting her doctorate, who also worked at the museum with Trix. Trix was another one of my ocs. I'd written her into a later Doppelganger rewrite as the collector's curator. She was also clairvoyant. She was younger than Robin by a couple of years, but they were still good friends.

Ok so that was two ocs in this world, three if I counted, and probably too many but hey my policy with fics was always go big or go home… hmm… that was probably why they all flopped, they got too big and got away from me. Anyway, who else? Well I could do Luffy, but I wanted to avoid him as long as possible, simply because I wasn't entirely sure what to do with him yet.

Usopp would be a jack of all trades. He hadn't picked a major yet, but was taking a whole bunch of different classes, stuff like creative writing and wood working.

Who else? Oh! Chopper! Med-school clearly, way early admission, but hey the kid was a genius, right? I didn't know enough about med school to say if he was in pre or regular, but hey the effect would fill that in for me, right? I really hoped so. And if we were placing Chopper we might as well place Law too since all over Tumblr people were calling them doctor bros, sort of like how Tony and Bruce from Avengers were called Science Bros, though that might have been a ship. I don't know, I'm not really into the Avengers fandom I've only saw like one movie and I was mostly paying attention to Loki, Black Widow, and Hawkeye.

Brook taught Music, Franky taught wood working. Zorro and Luffy were from town and well… I didn't know if they went to the college or not, I'd let the effect figure it out. Perona, Zoro's sister in this AU, because gods above and below did I love the family dynamic between Zoro, Perona, and Mihawk, but anyway she went to the college as a fashion major, you could not tell me she would not be in fashion to dictate what is cute and what is not.

I frowned, trying to think of more canon characters, but there were so many that trying to just pull one free was starting to fry my brain. I threw my pencil down and rubbed at my eyes, my glasses joining the pencil on the table.

Dear gods! Why?

"Are you okay?" Azrael asked, hovering just over my left shoulder.

"Not in the slightest." I grumbled.

I grabbed my glasses from the table and slipped them back on and shuffled my papers. I wrote in a couple more precautions and threw the papers into a folder and the folder into my bag. I put the strap of my bag over my shoulder and stood.

"Alright Azrael, you get your wish. I'm going to go out and interact with someone." I announced.

Azrael smiled, looking more relieved than they probably should have. They didn't know my plan yet.

Azrael followed me. I snagged my jacket by the door and slid out the door.

I took the stairs instead of the elevator to give myself more time to think. Was I really doing this? Of course, I was because I was an idiot. I was also scared crapless, so perhaps I shouldn't. No, I'd made up my mind, now was not the time to back out.

"So, who are you going to interact with? Ren? Coby? The character you totally have a crush on but don't want to admit?" I nearly choked on air, how the hell had Azrael know about that?

"The girl in the bookstore."

Azrael stopped short. I turned to watch them. "Are you insane?"

"Not that I'm aware of, but that doesn't take it completely off the table."

"She'll eat you alive! Literally!"

"You said it yourself, she trapped herself in there, as long as I don't cross the threshold I'm good. And I'm sorry, but I need answers. Answers you can't give me."

"How do you know?"

"Because I doubt you can tell me the leading factor in the spiral to become a monster. And besides that, she's obviously been around the spell longer so she might be able to give some tips on how to work it."

"You would trust someone who tried to kill you over me?"

"Trust has nothing to do with it."

With a pout and an exaggerated sob Azrael popped out of existence. Well hell! I hadn't meant to upset anybody. I shook my head. Making sure Azrael was alright was important, but it wasn't like I could find them without cheating and if I didn't confront the girl in the bookstore now I'd lose my nerve.

So I turned on my heel and continued to the bookstore. Once I got there I stood two feet back from the entrance and pushed the doors open with my newly written in telekinesis. Yes, it was a cheat, but I couldn't think of any other way to do it without getting close enough for her to eat me. I would write the telekinesis away as soon as I was done with her. Telekinesis wasn't my preferred power anyway.

The girl was standing there when the doors opened. She quirked an eyebrow at the distance I stood. "Really now, is all that necessary?"

"You tried to eat me!"

"Yes well, it would have been a much better fate than what's coming."

"Must everyone here speak in riddles?"

"Do you really expect anything different? We're in a spell world."
Which reminded me. "Why did you turn yourself into a monster?"

"Do you know why I named my shop Good and Evil books?"

"What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

"Some books are good, some even neutral, they don't cross any lines. They just exist. Some teach lessons. Some allow us to move beyond our realm. Others, others are evil. They snatch up our souls and rip us apart. There are more spell books out there than just Azrael and not all of them are good. I wonder in the end, which side you'll choose."

What the hell?